my Advice; go no more along with that Woman:  You may soon be brought home deprived of your Life if you do.  I cannot say, whether she knew her; but this I must say, she was very agreeable in Wit as well as Person.  However my Landlady and her Daughter took that Opportunity of giving me so many Instances of the fatal Issues of such innocent Conversations, (for I could not call it an Intrigue) that apprehensive enough of the Danger, on laying Circumstances together, I took their Advice, and never went into her Company after.

Sainte Clemente de la Mancha, where I so long remain’d a Prisoner of War, lies in the Road from Madrid to Valencia; and the Duke of Vendome being ordered to the latter, great Preparations were made for his Entertainment, as he pass’d through.  He stay’d here only one Night, where he was very handsomely treated by the Corrigidore.  He was a tall fair Person, and very fat, and at the time I saw him wore a long black Patch over his left Eye; but on what Occasion I could not learn.  The afterwards famous Alberoni (since made a Cardinal) was in his Attendance; as indeed the Duke was very rarely without him.  I remember that very Day three Weeks, they return’d through the same Place; the Duke in his Herse, and Alberoni in a Coach, paying his last Duties.  That Duke was a prodigious Lover of Fish, of which having eat over heartily at Veneros, in the Province of Valencia, he took a Surfeit, and died in three Days’ time.  His Corps was carrying to the Escurial, there to be buried in the Panthaeon among their Kings.

The Castilians have a Privilege by Licence from the Pope, which, if it could have been converted into a Prohibition, might have sav’d that Duke’s Life:  In regard their Country is wholly inland, and the River Tagus famous for its Poverty, or rather Barrenness; their Holy Father indulges the Natives with the Liberty, in lieu of that dangerous Eatable, of eating all Lent time the Inwards of Cattle.  When I first heard this related, I imagin’d, that the Garbidge had been intended, but I was soon after this rectify’d, by Inwards (for so expressly says the Licence it self) is meant the Heart, the Liver, and the Feet.

They have here as well as in most other Parts of Spain, Valencia excepted, the most wretched Musick in the Universe.  Their Guitars, if not their Sole, are their darling Instruments, and what they most delight in:  Tho’ in my Opinion our English Sailors are not much amiss in giving them the Title of Strum Strums.  They are little better than our Jews-harps, tho’ hardly half so Musical.  Yet are they perpetually at Nights disturbing their Women with the Noise of them, under the notion and name of Serenadoes.  From the Barber to the Grandee the Infection spreads, and very often with the same Attendant, Danger:  Night Quarrels and Rencounters being the frequent